MH-230 cLOUDDEAD - TenTen finds cLOUDDEAD building on all of the elements that defined their debut: razor sharp vocal interplay, quirky found sound samples, ambient drone dreamscapes, lyrics that walk the line between observational and confessional, and a fair share of nosdam drums slowed to a growl. Doseone and why? never take the cheap way out. Their lyrics may range from blurry and buried to sharp and surfaced, but each and every line has meaning. The music and production are collaborative, featuring Doseone's knack for bottling emotion, why's self-taught multi-instrumentalist efforts, and odd nosdam's flair for borrowed genius. Individually, Doseone, why? and odd nosdam are as prolific and fearless as anyone in today's new music scene, but together as cLOUDDEAD they are able to create music that captures all of the promise of their individual talents in an unequaled sound.

This deadly tripped out trio of Anticon allstars Doseone, why?, and odd nosdam have unleashed a truly worthy and perhaps even more stunning release than their self-titled debut with the ten (though there is a "hidden" eleventh) insane tracks that make up their second album Ten. Hip-hop taken into some stoned psychedelic dreamy nightmare location where cartoony voices narrate songs about glowing dead dogs that get up and move around, wooden peoples interactions, goats with rectangled irises, assassinated cultural heroes, random surreal juxtapositions, Elvis, and Wilbur and Orville Wright, or to sample a few choice phrases run together: "A spider spitting web on a Styrofoam snowman's head / It's the wooden man and his splintering self / It's the wooden woman and her hollowing out / Wingless wasp, the velvet ant / The cow on slanted land settles to the lowermost corner of the pen" Not exactly the typical rapper's repertoire all delivered in a compellingly fractured rhythmic rhyming (or not) addictive thickness and blunted sensibility taken to new artistic heights. Musically plundering pulsings, crazy samples, cryptically vivid sonic emotional cues that evoke whole urban landscapes of desolation, claustrophobia and a strange inner vitality. One of the finest and weirdest albums of 2004. - Dream